Various types of manual, semi-automatic and automatic cigarette-making machines are known in which loose tobacco is compacted into a rod-like shape and transported into a hollow cigarette tube to prepare a cigarette. In many of these cigarette-making machines loose tobacco is first placed into a compacting apparatus including a compacting chamber in which a reciprocating compacting member engages and compresses the loose tobacco into the rod-like shape and then is withdrawn from the compacting chamber. This compressed tobacco rod-like shape is typically carried on an injection spoon which moves across the compacting chamber to transport the rod-like shape into a hollow cigarette tube positioned outside the cigarette-making machine and adjacent the chamber.
Cigarette tobacco naturally contains sugars and other natural components and may also contain liquid additives all of which are partially released as a gummy mixture when the tobacco is compressed as in a compacting mechanism. Compressing loose tobacco not only releases such gummy mixtures but it also breaks up some of the loose tobacco to produce tobacco fines. The tobacco fines as well as the gummy mixtures released during the compressing operation may present impediments to the efficient operation of the compacting apparatus.
Although problems are not likely to arise in the initial use of cigarette-making machines with compacting apparatuses as described above, after myriad loose tobacco loads are compressed and transported into cigarette tubes, the build-up of tobacco fines and gummy tobacco materials may impede the movement of the reciprocating compacting member. If this impediment to movement could be reduced or eliminated, the operation of cigarette-making machines using compacting apparatuses could be substantially improved.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide a structure for controlling the build up of tobacco fines and gummy tobacco materials during the operation of cigarette-making machines using compacting apparatuses.